I'm actually surprised this sort of thing doesn't happen more often around AKL. The boundaries between controlled and uncontrolled airspce rely on VFR pilots being able to identify surface landmarks in places that aren't intuitively obvious, and relate them to maximum allowed altitudes, above which you punch through into AKL approach's domain.

As a private pilot myself I still find it more complicated than it needs to be ("okay I've passed that hill so can go up to 3000', but does that NOTAM apply to here.....?"). In fact I once caused a Malaysian 772 to take corrective (I like the term better than "evasive") action. I was close to the maximum allowed altitude, but my transponder was faulty and broadcasting my altitude as almost 1000' higher than I actually was. AKL approach therefore thought I had violated their airspace and moved the Malaysian aircraft out of the way.